ABSTRACT
The social anthropologists of the 1940s were well aware of how easily disciplinary boundaries could be crossed and the likelihood that those with little or no formal training in the discipline would be regarded as anthropologists. Some of the few academic posts for anthropologists in Britain were held by people who had learned their anthropology on the job, as colonial administrators and missionaries. Members of the new Association of Social Anthropologists agreed in 1947 that it was important to create a specialised professional identity for social anthropologists that differentiated them from the many who had interests in anthropology. Colonial governments certainly did not regard anthropologists as reliable upholders of the system. Rather they were critics of the colonial order, under suspicion as possible agents of subversion, especially since their fraternisation with local people did not conform to colonial etiquette ‘and might give people ideas’.
